The Aurora City Council on Monday night will consider inking an agreement with the FBI and the military “to assist, respond, detect, detain and investigate” anyone flying a drone over Buckley Space Force Base.
The agreement, which refers to the devices as unmanned aircraft systems, comes months after a frenzy of sightings of mystery drones along the East Coast dominated media coverage for weeks.
“UAS operation over installations and in (Department of Defense) restricted airspace has continued to grow in capability and frequency and poses a threat to the installation and DoD assets,” reads a memo accompanying Monday’s council agenda.
In a statement, Buckley said the base has “limited or no jurisdiction to detain operators located off the installation, or to obtain pertinent information without the assistance of civilian law enforced departments.”
Enter the FBI and the Aurora Police Department, which operate freely on the other side of the base’s secure fence.
“This agreement will foster an effective liaison partnership and will greatly enhance the defense for Buckley Space Force Base,” the Buckley statement says.
Base officials didn’t disclose whether there have been any drone incursions over the sprawling facility in eastern Aurora. But at a hearing of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Military and Foreign Affairs last week in Washington, D.C., the message from lawmakers and military officials was one of urgency.
U.S. Rep. William Timmons, the chair of the subcommittee, called unauthorized drone flights over U.S. military bases “one of the most complex and serious threats to our national security.”
The South Carolina Republican cited a 17-day streak of unidentified drones that breached the air space over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia in December 2023, requiring that F-22 Raptor squadrons be relocated to other bases. He also cited the arrest of a Chinese national last November after detection equipment at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California tracked a drone to a public park outside the base.
The alleged drone operator was arrested at San Francisco International Airport as he tried boarding a flight to China, federal law enforcement officials said.
Overall, Timmons said there were 350 detections of drones at 100 military installations in 2024 alone.
Vikki Migoya, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Denver field office, said her agency was given the authority to “counter unmanned aircraft systems” in 2018 with the passage of the Preventing Emerging Threats Act.
“This law allows the FBI to act to mitigate the threat that unmanned aircraft pose to the safety or security of facilities or assets,” she said. “It is standard practice for entities with overlapping jurisdictions and common concerns to have an (agreement) in place to facilitate cooperation when it comes to investigation of potential criminal behavior.”
Drones last made big news in Colorado five years ago, when a band of them appeared to be flying nighttime search patterns over northeast Colorado. The drones, estimated to have 6-foot wingspans, were seen flying over Phillips and Yuma counties in December 2019.
Then-Phillips County Sheriff Thomas Elliott said the drones were doing a “grid search.”
“They fly one square and then they fly another square,” he said at the time.
The Colorado Department of Public Safety looked into the drone activity but was unable to provide any definitive information about their origins or purpose.
At last week’s subcommittee hearing, the vice director for operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Rear Admiral Paul Spedero, testified that drone technology was outpacing counter-drone technology, meaning that relatively unsophisticated drones can circumvent counter-drone and jamming technology.
All the more reason that it’s “imperative that we plan for and evolve our defenses in proactive and innovative ways to ensure the safety and security of our personnel and essential missions,” the Buckley base statement says.
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